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July 17, 2010

Airport Hotel: Synchronicity or Coincidence?

So, after nearly a week of sweating in the Parisian heat and not really being able to sleep all that well for nights on end, I made a little change in plans and booked an airport hotel for our last two nights before flying to Riga.

Spoiled? Yeah, maybe.

Air-conditioning and internet are nice things to live with, that's all.

But it turns out that this little decision to move to the airport was also a story of synchronicity/coincidence...through the miracle of facebook. A friend of mine from way-back-when whom I had not seen in many years (to protect the innocent, I'll leave him unnamed, but tell you that he is a gifted poet and stand-up comedian) also happened to be in Paris last week and was to have flown back to North America on Friday night. Horribly, as he was on his way to check in to his airport hotel, he was robbed at Gare du Nord station. All of his identity documents and credit cards were stolen. Just in time for the weekend when no embassies are open. I, of course, had no knowledge that he was even in Europe at that time, but his sister alerted him on facebook that I was in Paris. On Sunday night, he sent me a message on facebook and on Monday evening, (our last day in Paris) we discovered we were actually staying in hotels which were not only on the same street, but were five minutes walking distance from each other!

Needless to say, we had dinner and got a little caught up on decades worth of life. A small world? What are the chances? Neither of us had originally intended to be staying at an airport hotel that day; he was only there because of his nasty situation, and I was only there because I couldn't take the heat any longer.

(One of the bonuses of this encounter was, as his internet was down he brought over his laptop to our hotel room; he is my arch-nemesis on my one online game indulgence -Word Twist- and I got to watch him play in person, and see the intensity with which he plays this game....which has in turn only fueled my determination to beat him at his game more often!)